


Unstring Our Bones

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Classics, Gen, Hannibal as written by Donna Tartt, M/M, canon typical violence/canibalism/everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-13 07:24:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7967701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham arrived at Hampden College expecting to spend a lonely few years studying psychology. Then he met Hannibal Lecter, switched his major to classical studies, and got caught up in something he doesn't quite understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been vaguely planning to write this story for, uh...a few years? But hey, here we are!
> 
> This fic is heavily based on/inspired by _The Secret History_ by Donna Tartt, which is about a group of classics students who make very bad decisions. I highly recommend it. This fic steals the premise, the setting, and some, but not all, of the plot details. (I expect it will deviate more in the second half.) To be clear, though, this is the kind of college AU where people still get murdered.

**Book One**

_Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! [...] If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn._  
  
\-- _Donna Tartt, The Secret History_

  


When Will arrived at Hampden College on a pale morning in the beginning of September, he couldn't help but be surprised by the beauty and lushness of it. The buildings looked just like they had in the brochures, but it was startling to see them in person instead of through glossy magazine pages. Staring at the elegant stone of his dorm room, it finally sunk into Will’s skin that this was reality. He lived here now. He wasn’t going back home for a long time.

The mild Vermont air was a relief after the sticky heat of Louisiana, especially as Will lugged his suitcases up flight after flight of stairs, only to deposit them into his airless dorm room with its single tiny window. He didn't have that many things, really, which made the job slightly easier, but he also didn't have anyone to help him. His father hadn't protested when Will told him he was transferring, had filled out the financial aid forms when Will put them in front of his face and prodded, but he had otherwise said nothing else about it. The message was clear: Will was free to go, but if he did, he was doing it on his own. 

Will unpacked the few clothes and tattered books he had in his suitcase, a beat-up copy of Herodotus’s _Histories_ and a few true crime paperbacks. He was considering the dilemma of which corner of his room to shove his suitcases into when someone stuck their head in through the door he'd left ajar as he worked.

"Hey neighbor," said the woman, "want to go get take-out? I can drive us!" 

That was how Will met Beverly Katz. 

Beverly, as Will learned on the drive over to a Chinese place she described as shitty but cheap, was from California, and was majoring in chemistry with aspirations to get a master's in forensic science. She also knew everything there was to know about the social landscape of Hampden, and generously offered her services in order to help the new transfer student get acclimated. 

"I don't think I'm going to be doing that much socializing," Will said. Other students didn't tend to like him, and the feeling was often mutual.

Beverly rolled her eyes. "You're the stay in the library all day type? Good luck with that. My money says you'll be eating your words in a month or two. Not even geniuses can study all the time."

They pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, and Will found himself splitting the cost of lo mein and dumplings with Beverly. They ate sitting cross-legged on Beverly's floor. She had a knack for telling stories that were genuinely meant to be about entertainment and not self-aggrandizement. She also didn't seem to mind when Will completely missed or ignored social cues, including when he accidentally asked a pointed and awkward question about the school she’d attended for a year before Hampden. After they'd eaten their food and shoved the rest into the fridge (although Beverly warned him that labels or not, it wasn't likely to stay there for more than twenty-four hours), Will hovered by her door awkwardly, unsure whether or not he was expected to stay. 

Beverly just rolled her eyes at him again. "Go," she said, making a shooing motion with her hands. "You look like you're going to have an aneurysm if I try to talk at you any more. I can take a hint even if you apparently can't." She said it kindly, and even managed to shut the door to her room in Will's face without it being rude. 

Will went back to his room, began to unpack, and thought that transferring was turning out well for him already.

\- 

The next morning, Will met with his advisor to choose his classes.

"Hello, Will," said Dr. Bloom, as she gestured for him to sit down in her office. "I'm glad to meet you--I hope you enjoy your time here at Hampden."

Will mumbled something that he hoped was vaguely in the affirmative. Dr. Bloom's office was fairly sparse, with a few generic pictures on the walls and a minimum of clutter on the desk. He looked down at her hands clasped on the desk so he didn't have to look her in the eye.

To her credit, Dr. Bloom seemed fairly unfazed by this. She glanced over a file she had open on her desk. "I see you're planning to major in psychology?" She smiled at him. "That's my department."

They discussed Will's planned classes for a few minutes, all very straightforward. Then Dr. Bloom asked, "What were you thinking about doing for your language requirement? I know a few good professors in the French or Russian departments, if you're at all interested in either of those, and I think they would fit well into the classes we have laid out for you so far."

"I actually thought I might take Latin," Will said. "I studied it for two years back home. Might as well continue, right?" Will liked Latin. He liked the malleable structure of it, the way poets could scramble the words in any order they liked to make their point, the way you could use an ablative absolute to say almost anything. It was an interesting lens to see the world through. 

"Ah.” For the first time, Dr. Bloom looked a little concerned. "That may be a slight issue," she said apologetically. "You see, we only have on professor here who does any work with classical languages, and she has...a particularly specific teaching style."

"And?" Will asked, when Dr. Bloom seemed unsure of how to continue.

She sighed, and leaned back in her chair. "Dr. du Maurier allows only a select few students into her classes, on a case by case basis, and requires that students take the majority of their courses only with her. It's very unorthodox, and if I'm being honest, somewhat elitist." Dr. Bloom crossed her arms on the desk and leaned forward, tapping her pen against the wood. "It also means that it's impossible to take either Greek or Latin as standalone courses, until the college is able to hire more faculty. Honestly, I'd be surprised that Dr. du Maurier has been here for so long, but..." she trailed off with a shrug and a little 'what-can-you-do' gesture. "Tenure's a funny thing." 

"I see," Will said, seeing also that Dr. Bloom actually had quite a bit of professional respect for Dr. du Maurier, but objected strongly to her teaching practices, although that did not stop her from having frequent and deeply engaging conversations on various topics, from items related to psychology to the deeper meanings of certain myths--

\--Will blinked, and fell back into his own head, just as Dr. Bloom was saying, "I can connect you with one of the French professors if you like, though--if you have prior training in Latin, French should be a bit easier to pick up. Does that sound all right to you?"

Will nodded, glancing only briefly at Dr. Bloom's earnest face, and took her handwritten account of his course schedule. It was too bad about Latin--he'd read bits of the _Aeneid_ in his old classes, and had been hoping for the chance to finish it. 

Maybe if he avoided all the socializing that Beverly expected him to do, he'd be able to do it in his free time. 

-

He complained to Beverly about not being able to get into Latin classes, because she seemed like the sort of person who enjoyed hearing other people bitch.

"Ah, Dr. du Maurier," Beverly said, grinning. "My friend Jimmy tried to get into one of her classes once--to hear him tell it, she nearly threw him out of the room. He's definitely exaggerating, but man, I have heard some shit about that woman."

Both because she clearly wanted him to ask and because he actually wanted to know, Will said, "Could you elaborate a little more on that, or are you going to leave me in suspense all day?"

Beverly laughed. "You, in suspense? I don't think so. I'll take pity on you anyway. So Dr. Bloom told you she only lets in a 'select group' of students, right? All rich white old money types, because of course. It's like something out of _Gatsby_ \--there's only five of them and they don't really talk to anyone else. They all live off-campus. I bet you'll see them around one of these days, lurking in the shadows." The last bit Beverly said with a exaggerated raised eyebrows and her hands held in front of her like claws, and Will surprised himself by laughing naturally, without having to force it. He'd only been at Hampden a few days, and he was continually surprised by the fact that he genuinely liked Beverly, and that she seemed completely unfazed by all of his bullshit. 

It was nice. Things, in general, were going well. It almost made Will nervous. 

Beverly might have been prophetic, because the very next day, Will did see Dr. du Maurier's class. Beverly hadn't gone into much detail when she described them, but she was right: when they were in front of you, the five of them were completely unmistakable. 

Will didn't think that people had auras, and did not generally believe in anything that his eyes couldn't see. But in the past, his eyes had seen some strange things. There was something in the air when they were around. He first glimpsed them sitting together on the grounds, each absorbed in their own books, occasionally raising their heads to talk. There was something ethereal about them, something that suggested they belonged on a different plane than everyone else.

Even to himself, Will couldn’t explain it. On the surface, they looked perfectly normal—rich, certainly, but that could describe any number of people here. A redhead with clothes loud enough to match lay on her stomach in the grass, legs kicked up in the air, her book leaning against the knees of a pale-skinned brunette. Another pale and dark-haired girl sat beside them, her legs drawn up and her hair falling in front of her face like a curtain. As Will watched, a young man with wild hair and sloppy but expensive clothing said something to the group, laughing uproariously at himself and slapping his knee. None of the others so much as smiled. 

Will almost missed the last of the group--something about him made Will's eyes want to slide right past. He sat just slightly apart from the rest of them, in put together clothing that probably cost more than the entire contents of Will's new dorm room. He looked like a statue, elegant and untouchable and timeless all at once.

As Will was staring--there was really no other way to describe what he was doing--the last man looked up and met his gaze.

For a moment, Will's mind went utterly blank. He felt like a butterfly pinned to cardboard, like a corpse about to be autopsied, like a slide under a microscope--but only for a moment. He blinked, and the man was no longer watching at him. He sat placidly on the bench, reading his book.

Despite himself, Will felt deeply unsettled and equally deeply fascinated. He almost talked himself out of asking Beverly more about them several times before he blurted the question out in the middle of the dining hall that evening. 

"Oh, him?" she asked, when Will described the man who'd caught him staring. "That's Hannibal Lecter. All five of them are odd in their own ways, I guess, but even among strange company he's kind of an odd one out. The studious type, doesn't get out much--kind of like you, no offense."

Will rolled his eyes and made the requisite playful remark, but privately, he thought that Beverly might have a point. He and Hannibal Lecter had something in common, even if he didn't yet know quite what it was.

-

Will kept noticing them, almost against his will--whenever the five of them were around, often all together or in groups of two or three, he felt their presence like a physical thing, tugging at his stomach. It was like magnetism, both attracting and repelling. Two weeks into term Will could still not imagine actually speaking to one of them, although he could not stop watching them out of the corner of his eye. 

They were different from other people, but not in a _The Great Gatsby_ kind of way, whatever Beverly said. It was in all of them, to some extent, strongest in Hannibal Lecter and in the pale and dark-haired waif of a girl: it was a darkness that Will had always been able to feel in people, a sense that there was something deep and fathomless lurking underneath their skins. 

He knew it might very well just all be in his head, which made it both better and worse, but that didn't stop him from soaking up every bit of information he could about them, from Beverly and her friends Brian and Jimmy and the students in his classes.

No one knew that much about them, but Will was able to piece some things together. There was Hannibal Lecter, who spoke little and had an accent no one could place, and was too quietly intimidating for anyone to get up the nerve to ask. Abigail Hobbs, the girl Will had been thinking of as fragile, all big eyes and pale skin. She was the youngest of them all--no one knew how she'd talked herself in Dr. du Maurier's course as a freshman, but somehow she had. Freddie Lounds, who had a sharp tongue and wrote for the school newspaper in her spare time, and was therefore the most integrated with the rest of campus. And the Vergers, Mason and Margot. Brian had described them as Irish twins, though Will wasn’t sure which of them was older. Margot was quiet and measured where Mason was loud and obnoxious, and many students spoke well of him. Apparently he always had something illegal with him and wasn't shy about sharing. 

They were odd and standoffish and unapproachable, but Will still stared at them from behind his book in the library one afternoon, listening to them discuss Latin grammar and mythology. 

"I think we can all agree that the Greeks and Romans had some issues," Freddie was saying as Will settled down in his seat.

He saw Margot shrug. "They both had a specific way of doing things," she said. "We simply have different standards now, for better or for worse."

"I don't think I'd be okay with leaving my child out to die, though," said Abigail, joining them quietly. She moved like a ghost.

Mason barked out a laugh. "Not Margot," he said. "My sister doesn't have much of a maternal instinct, does she?"

"The maternal instinct, as you call it, in the modern sense, is fairly new," said Hannibal Lecter, as he looked up from his book. "Children were once seen fit to work in factories, to be utterly neglected by their parents after a certain age--only with Rousseau and his contemporaries did it become commonplace for mothers to care for their children the way that we expect now. The way the Greeks and Romans treated their infants is not so shocking when viewed in that light."

Abigail looked unconvinced, Margot impassive, Freddie interested. Mason looked annoyed at being interrupted.

"What about the Carthaginians?" he asked. "It's like, who was it? Plutarch! It was like Plutarch said. Now there's a fucked up ritual--they sacrificed infants, and the Greeks called it the ritual of laughter. How much joy it must have brought them!" He laughed, delighted.

Freddie rolled her eyes. "Are you doing extra reading now, Mason?" she said. "I'm impressed at your dedication." She did not look it.

Hannibal closed his book. "I believe it was Cleitarchus who wrote about that, actually," he said.

Will, his body moving quite without his mind giving any orders, stood and walked towards them. "They had a reason to call it that," he said, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat. "The muscles in the infant's mouths--the heat of the fire contracted them, and then they opened as they burned. Like laughter."

It occurred to him as he said it that this was probably not how he wished to be introduced to these people, but the words were already said. At least this time it wasn't him who had brought up the morbid and inappropriate topic of conversation.

"Well, thanks for clearing that up--I'm sure we would have been arguing about it for the next two hours otherwise," said Freddie. "And you are?"

"Will Graham."

Freddie smiled like a knife. "Will Graham! I've heard about you--transferred here just this year, isn't that right?"

Will stared at the bookcase past Freddie's left shoulder, and shrugged. "That's right.”

Mason laughed, loud and braying. "Don't scare him off, Freddie! This isn't an interview, you don't need to give him the full interrogation routine. If this is how you talk to all men, no wonder you haven't had a boyfriend the past two years!" 

Freddie eyed Mason coolly. "Yes, that must be why," she said. "Well, on that charming note, I'm needed at the newspaper office." She put her coat on with a flourish and swept out.

Mason came forward and slapped Will on the back, almost forcing him forward a step. "Don't mind our Freddie," he said, "she's always a bit like that."

Will nodded and remained silent, and Mason clapped him on the back once more before walking over to where his sister sat, going over homework with Abigail a table away.

That left Will standing with his hands in his pockets while Hannibal Lecter looked up at him, eyes gleaming.

"Please, Will," said Hannibal, gesturing to the chair beside him, "have a seat."

Will sat. 

"What Ms. Lounds said was correct? You are a transfer student?" Hannibal asked.

"Yeah," said Will. "Came straight here from the boatyards of Louisiana." He scratched the back of his neck, feeling small and shabby under Hannibal's gaze. The man's suits looked like they cost more than Will's dad's house, and everything Will was wearing right now had come from a thrift shop.

A corner of Hannibal's mouth lifted. To call it a smile would be generous. "I think you will soon find the weather here quite disappointing then, I'm afraid."

Will shrugged. "I've never seen snow. Might be nice."

"Please do invite me along when it first snows, then--it's so rare I get to see someone who has yet to see it." 

“I don't think it'll be that interesting, to be honest."

"On the contrary. I find that how one reacts to new experiences is often fascinating."

Will privately thought that it was somewhat unlikely that Hannibal would still be at all interested by the time it snowed. "Everything about Hampden is pretty new to me," he said instead.

"How are you enjoying our college so far?" asked Hannibal.

"Well, I haven't inadvertently freaked out any freshman yet, so that's an improvement over my last school," said Will, wincing after the words were out of his mouth. Not exactly the thing to say if you wanted to project the image of a normal person you might want to have sitting next to you in a classroom. "Sorry. I don't really...sometimes I say stuff that's upsetting without realizing, and people take issue."

Hannibal smiled, for real this time. "I believe I know the feeling," he said, looking Will in the eyes. "And your classes?"

This felt more like an interrogation than anything Freddie had asked, despite what Mason said. "They're all right. I was kind of hoping to continue taking Latin, but my advisor told me it wasn't possible without transferring to the classics program entirely."

"Your advisor was correct," said Hannibal. "And you do not wish to transfer?"

"I mean, I'm majoring in psychology. It'd be kind of a big jump." 

"Not necessarily. Nothing displays the perils of human psychology more than the classical epics. They quite clearly illustrate that humanity's less palatable qualities have persisted throughout thousands of years: the wrath of Achilles, the hubris of Arachne, the foolishness of Orpheus."

"Yeah," said Will. “Kind of fucked up. Interesting, though--that so little has really changed, even if on the surface nothing is the same. On the inside people are just a mess.”

Hannibal gave him a disapproving look, which Will realized was for swearing. He wondered how the guy survived a friendship with Mason Verger. “You are correct,” Hannibal said, not commenting on Will’s language. “The universality of the human condition remains. Probably it will continue to torment us for centuries to come.”

“That’s a depressing way to look at it.”

“Is it?” Hannibal asked, one eyebrow raised. “I find it somewhat comforting. That the negative emotions within ourselves calls back to those of the ancients, and forward to whomever will come after us. That we are not alone in our struggles, that our modern problems have a basis in the past.” He closed his book. “What in particular draws you to psychology?”

“I’m planning to study criminal psychology,” Will said. It was like his words were being pulled from his mouth, like they were a fish caught on a line, helpless and wriggling. He kept thinking he should stop talking, end the conversation before it became awkward, before Hannibal understood too much about him. But he didn’t. “Why people do the things they do—serial killers, especially. It goes against everything we think we understand about human nature, to kill not just out of passion but out of coldness and calculation.”

“War involves much killing borne from calculation,” Hannibal observed.

“True. But that’s different. It’s not personal. Wars happen for political or social reasons, but serial murders—they happen because a person needs to satisfy something within themselves, something internal.”

“A compulsion.”

Will shrugged. “A lot of times, yeah.”

Hannibal began to gather up his books. “As much as I would like to continue,” he said, “I have classes to attend. You really should consider switching courses. I would certainly appreciate your voice in our discussions."

Will wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to that. "I'm not sure Dr. du Maurier would agree with you."

"I will speak to her,” Hannibal said as he stood, with more authority in his voice than Will thought a student really ought to have. "I'm sure we can work something out."

-

Dr. du Maurier, when Will finally met her, was much like Hannibal. Her expression was opaque, smooth but unreadable, and like Hannibal, Will was lost when he tried to figure out what she was thinking. His mind slid from hers like water on glass.

They met in her office. Will had not realized before stepping into Dr. du Maurier's space how intentionally welcoming Dr. Bloom's office had been--Dr. Bloom's walls were a pale blue and her furniture all deep warm browns, and the pictures were simple landscapes, innocuous but comforting. It was a place one was meant to relax in. 

Dr. du Maurier's office was not like that. The walls were stark white and bare, her furniture sharp-cornered and polished to a shine, and the only decorations were a few small statues scattered about the room. Will recognized Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf, and an image of Apollo, but the rest were unfamiliar. 

"Mr. Graham," said Dr. du Maurier, as Will settled down in the seat across from her desk. It was not very comfortable. Will realized, to his dismay, that there were not many places in the room to focus on in order to avoid looking at Dr. du Maurier straight on. For now, he settled for the dark and gleaming surface of her desk. "I understand you are interested in enrolling in my course?"

"Yes, I am."

"You are familiar with a few of my students, I am told--Hannibal Lecter, in particular. Is that right as well?"

"Hannibal and I have talked, yes. We...met in the library a few days ago, and discussed some things. I told him I was interested in your courses, and he seemed to agree that I might enjoy them," said Will. His voice sounded stilted to his own ears. He hoped Dr. du Maurier wouldn't notice, although he was beginning to feel unsure that there was anything she didn't notice. 

"Hannibal tells me you have an interest in human error. Crime and murder.” 

"It's...more the psychology of it than anything else," Will said. Dr. du Maurier's face was still as a lake. He wondered what it would take to make emotion ripple across it. 

"That's what you were going to study before, wasn't it? Psychology? An interesting subject--Dr. Bloom and I often have much to say to one another."

"The human condition is fascinating." 

Dr. du Maurier did not quite smile, but the smooth marble of her face relaxed somewhat. "The Greeks and Romans would certainly have agreed with you. From what Hannibal tells me, I think you will do quite well in my course, Mr. Graham. Though I must question your motives in such a sudden change in your course of study."

"Your students can be quite convincing.” Will aimed for levity and missed, because it was true, of course. Were it not for Hannibal Lecter, he would not be sitting here, trying to talk his way into a different major than the one he'd been planning on for years. 

"True," Dr. du Maurier said. "But surely that is not the only reason you are here."

Will hated these moments--times when it seemed like so much depended on him saying the right thing. Will was terrible at saying the right thing, even when he was able to figure out what the right thing would be. Here, in this office with its stark corners and pristine white statues, he was adrift. This was not his world, and he did not know what Dr. du Maurier wanted to hear. "I guess...classical texts are fascinating. There's a...brutality to them, an honesty, that doesn't exist anywhere else. Even in psychology, which can be so dark, we like to gloss over that kind of stuff, to believe that on some level people can be inherently good."

"Humans have always been dark and mysterious creatures," she agreed. "And modernity has stripped us of many of our passions.” She tilted her head and looked at Will, assessing. “I can see why you got along so well with Mr. Lecter--he often speaks in a similar vein."

"Yes," said Will. "I noticed."

-

Dr. Bloom was not happy when Will told her his plans, but he hadn't really expected her to be. 

She made sympathetic faces at him, and what made it truly unpleasant was the fact that she was utterly and completely sincere--Will knew that beneath the surface, Dr. Bloom really was concerned for his wellbeing. She thought Dr. du Maurier was interesting as a person but questionable as a professor, and that becoming one of her students would be bad for Will.

She might be right, but Will couldn't bring himself to care. What had he come to Hampden for, if not to escape his old life?

There was nothing less like his old life than Dr. du Maurier and her stark office and level gaze, Abigail Hobbs and her big doe eyes, Freddie Lounds and her sharp tongue, Margot Verger and her reserved elegance, Mason Verger and his obnoxious disregard for everything but himself, and at the end of it all: Hannibal Lecter and his dark, watchful eyes and strange smile, managing to make Will feel like a fly trapped in amber but not managing to make him mind it. 

That wasn't what he said to Dr. Bloom, of course. He spoke to Dr. Bloom of his interest in classical literature and his hopes to grow beyond his modest roots, and in the end she had no choice but to bite her lip and agree, and to sign the forms he needed to switch classes.

-

Will told Beverly about his decision in the dining hall, straining slightly to be heard over a few guys a table over who were bragging loudly about their sexual conquests. 

"Listen," said Beverly, sipping her coke, "I know you think this is the right path for you or whatever, and I mean, I am all for taking control of your own destiny and all that jazz. But are you sure this is a good idea? As we have previously discussed, those guys are _weird_."

"This may have escaped your notice, Beverly," said Will, "but I am also very weird."

Beverly shrugged this off. "You're weird like a one-eyed skittish cat is weird. Odd, but still cute. They're weird like a tapping noise on your bedroom window at night when there's no one around is weird. Kind of intangible, but also super upsetting."

"Your analogies could use some work," Will said dryly. 

"You don't appreciate the cat comparison?"

"I can't believe you just compared a group of people to the monster you think is under your bed."

"That is _not_ what I said. And anyway, you know what I'm talking about--you're supposed to be able to read vibes off people, you can't tell me there's not something off about them."

Only the same thing that's off about me, Will thought. "I think you're just worried I'll make too many new friends and forget about you," he said.

Beverly snorted inelegantly. "That's always been my concern with you, that you're going to be making _too many_ friends." 

"Just trust me, Beverly," Will said. "Psychology was great, but...it hit a little too close to home sometimes. Classical studies is safer. Everyone involved already died over two thousand years ago. No chance of me getting too deep inside anyone's head."

"If you say so," Beverly said, tapping her fork against her plate. "If you get me dessert, I'll even agree to drop the subject."

-

Will started his new classes that following Monday. When he arrived at the outer room of Dr. du Maurier's office, where she held all her classes, he was faintly glad not to be the first one there. Mason and Margot sat side by side, Mason telling what sounded like a dirty joke and Margot not appearing to be listening to him. She looked up when Will walked in.

"Hello," she said. "I don't think you and I were properly introduced the last time we saw each other. Margot Verger." She held out her hand. 

Will managed to stop himself from saying that he already knew that. He stuck his hand out and shook hers perfunctorily, her grip surprisingly strong. "Will Graham," he said, although he suspected that Margot also already knew his name. "It's nice to meet you."

"I'm sure Mason will appreciate the extra male presence in the room," she said, expression unchanging. "He's often complained of this classroom being 'overrun by women'."

"You have to admit I have a point, Margot," said Mason, although he did not look up from where he had begun frantically scribbling what appeared to be Latin in his notebook. 

"And does Hannibal also have that complaint?" Will asked as he sat down.

Margot blew a breath out of her nose, and a corner of her mouth twisted up. "No," she said, "I must admit that Hannibal Lecter is often a touch more sensible than my brother."

"I heard that," said Mason, as if there was any way that he might not have, sitting right beside Margot in a small room. 

"I don't know if sensible is the word I would use to describe Hannibal," said Will.

"No?" asked a voice from behind him. It was Hannibal, of course. Will suppressed a sigh.

Hannibal sat down beside him, pulling out his notebooks and pens with great efficiency. He saved Will from having to come up with some sort of reply by continuing to speak himself, just as Abigail and Freddie filed into the room. "I have to say that I agree with you." He looked up at Will. "And what about you? Do you feel that you are sensible, Will?"

Will looked Hannibal Lecter in the eyes, and said that he did not. 

The corners of Hannibal's mouth turned up. A moment later, Dr. du Maurier walked in and began class. Will tried to pay attention, but for the next two hours, he could not shake the feel of Hannibal's gaze or the weight of his smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a classicist, and most of what I know comes from the fact that I took a few years of Latin and have a lot of classics majors for friends. All correct classics info can be attributed to them; all incorrect classics info can be attributed to stuff I vaguely remember from Latin class. In particular, shout out to thesparkofrevolution for being the kind of person who will actually provide a useful answer when I send her a text asking for, and I quote, "fun facts about human sacrifice". Feel free to hit me up if I get anything embarrassingly wrong.
> 
> In a perfect world I would have some sort of update schedule for this, but alas, I am a college student. My hope is to at least post a chapter every two weeks. Fingers crossed! Find me on tumblr [here](http://luckydicekirby.tumblr.com/) and we can chat about Hannibal, The Secret History, or literally anything else.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to ceruleanvulpine for looking this over. Also for encouraging me to work on this instead of my homework.

Dr. Bloom had told him that catching up on so much work weeks into the semester would be difficult, and she was right. Will enjoyed it. Beverly complained that he was spending too much time in the library, but Will liked it there. The whole place smelled comforting, like leather and old paper, and it wasn't often busy. He wasn’t expected to talk to anyone there.

Unsurprisingly, Hannibal spent a lot of time in the library as well. He was accompanied often by Abigail, occasionally by Margot or Freddie, and quite rarely by Mason. Will sometimes looked up from studying and saw them in a corner, bent over their work, and had to talk himself out of going to join them. He didn't know if his presence would be welcome, or if it would just make things awkward. In his experience, if he wasn't sure if something would be uncomfortable or not, then the answer was probably yes. 

He spoke to them only if he had a question about an assignment, and refused to let himself make anything up as a pretense. Several weeks passed in this manner. Will saw Dr. du Maurier's fellow students during classes, but he did not sit with them at meals, did not socialize with them. He watched them, out of the corner of his eyes, and they were as magnetic as ever, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to approach. He wasn’t sure if he could.

Honestly, Will had no idea what he’d expected. He’d known going in that he wasn’t like these people. Hannibal Lecter and Mason Verger wore suits that cost more than Will's budget for the semester. Margot was part of Hampden’s equestrian club, and he knew she kept horses at her home. 

Will, as a young boy, had once asked his father if they could get a horse. It seemed like that would be the perfect companion. His father had laughed, and said they couldn’t even afford a dog, though that never stopped Will from feeding the strays that gathered around their home.

He couldn’t imagine that the kind of people who wore suits to class would have anything in common with him.

For the most part, the other students seemed content to ignore him in return. But Will could often feel Hannibal’s eyes on him, though it was impossible to catch him looking. He wanted desperately to speak to him again. Even to himself he couldn’t articulate why. It wasn’t the same reasons he liked speaking to Beverly. She was calming because she wanted nothing from him that he couldn’t give: she didn’t expect him to be polite or to respond to anything the way a normal person would. Will didn’t think she understood him, really, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She was the kind of normal friend that Will had never had before.

She wasn’t like Hannibal at all. He was not relaxing, or normal—Will felt on edge around him, as if the very air had taken up an electrical charge. Hannibal, Will was sure, wanted a lot from him. That should be off-putting. Will hated the weight of expectation. But somehow, with Hannibal, it wasn’t. 

Their first conversation in the library had so far been their only real one, aside from the times when they spoke in class. But those were not the same: they didn’t make Will feel as though his mind was being flayed. 

It wasn’t that he missed the feeling. Or at least he told himself it wasn’t. But there had been an understanding in Hannibal’s eyes as they spoke of humanity’s faults that Will had never seen anywhere else. He wanted to see it again.

If his classes continued as planned, he’d be taking courses with Dr. du Maurier for the next two years. There would be time enough for him to speak with Hannibal Lecter, to figure out exactly what it was that gave his gaze that precise quality.

-

Beverly told Will that he studied too much on an almost daily basis, though she only very occasionally did anything about it. On an unseasonably warm and muggy Friday night in October, she popped her head into his room and made a disgusted noise at the sight of him analyzing passages of the _Iliad_. Their class hadn't started learning Greek yet, but Dr. du Maurier insisted that getting a good grounding in the literature, even in English, was important. 

"Nope," she said, resting her arms and elbows on Will's hunched back. "You are not staying in all night reading about dumb dead gay Greeks."

"I'll be sure to put that in my next paper," Will said, closing the book and taking off his glasses. He had learned from experience that with Beverly, sometimes it was in his best interests to pick his battles. 

“There’s a party over at Bradbury House. You’re coming with me,” she declared, and then started rifling through his closet. “What do you own so many sweaters? Aren’t you from the south?” Beverly herself was from California.

“Louisiana nights can be cold,” Will said. “And in the interests of not contracting hypothermia while I’m here, I figured I’d better stock up before I moved.” He considered pleading that he was sick—he did, in fact, feel a little shivery, as if he might have a fever. He didn’t own a thermometer to check, though, and anyway, he knew that when Beverly was in this kind of mood, it probably wouldn’t do any good regardless. 

“Probably a good plan. Here, put these one.” She tossed Will his nicest pair of jeans and what was probably the least wrinkled button-down she could find. 

“Do you want any help picking out _your_ outfit?” Will asked. He pulled off his t-shirt and started changing—Beverly had already turned her back on him, and was examining a few of the paperbacks on his bookshelf.

She snorted. “No offense, but I think I’m good.”

“So what kind of party is this? Am I going to be expected to make conversation?”

“It’s the kind of party with free booze. It’ll be fine, Jimmy and Brian are coming, you can always glower in a corner with them.”

“I’m not sure they’d appreciate that.” Will finished changing, and Beverly gave him a once-over and a thumbs up.

“Lookin’ good,” she said. 

Will flopped back onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. “Great. Thanks. This is going to go horribly.”

Beverly laughed at him.

-

The party was dark, smoky, and smelled largely of cheap beer. It reminded Will a bit of home. He recognized several of the students there: Beverly, of course, tugging Will along by the arm, Brian and Jimmy, and a few people he had seen now and again with Freddie Lounds.

Will didn’t know why Beverly insisted on bringing him to these things. He was happy enough drinking cheap vodka in her dorm room whenever the urge struck him—he didn’t see why becoming unwisely intoxicated was something that required this much company.

“You’re a ridiculous person,” Beverly said. “I’m gonna go get another shitty beer. You?”

Will shrugged, and Beverly disappeared into the amorphous crowd. Will resigned himself to finding a comfortable corner to lurk in—the part of the room he was standing in right now seemed in immediate danger of becoming a dance floor. As he was looking around for the best escape route, Freddie Lounds appeared at his elbow, tapping something out on her phone and offering him a cigarette. 

“Are we even allowed to smoke in here?” Will asked.

Freddie shrugged, took his lack of an answer for refusal, and lit her own cigarette. “It hasn’t gotten me kicked out yet,” she said. She finished her text and put her phone back in her purse.

Here was one of those conversational gaps that Will had no idea what to do with. Probably, he should ask a question. But what did he know about Freddie Lounds? She worked at the newspaper. But Will didn’t know anything about the newspaper, nothing that he could form an intelligent question around. He could say something about class, that was an area of common ground. What had they been studying in Latin today again?

This, he could hear Beverly say in his head, is why you don’t have that many friends.

Freddie spoke again before Will could decide on a safe conversational opener. “You’re not much for talking, are you.”

“Uh,” said Will. “It depends.”

Freddie raised an eyebrow at him. “The rest of us not good enough for you?”

Will stared at her. “You all don’t seem that interested in me,” he said. Which was fair, of course.

Freddie rolled her eyes. “Will, you don't talk to us, you barely look anyone in the eye, you run away almost immediately after class ends--what are we supposed to think? Everyone else is too polite to get to know you. Well, not Mason. He’s not too polite for anything.” 

“Honestly there’s not that much to know.”

“Now I know _that_ isn’t true. Everyone’s got a story. Especially the first new student we’ve got since Abigail! And her story was _so_ interesting, I bet yours is a real doozy. What brought you to our fine classics department?”

Now Will did feel like he was being interviewed. “Chance,” he said. “Fate, maybe.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I like Latin. Hannibal seemed—interesting. I’m sorry if I act unapproachable. I’m kind of like that. And honestly, I could say the same for you guys.”

She exhaled, blowing smoke in Will’s face. He wasn’t sure whether or not it was on purpose. "I guess I don't blame you for being intimidated. Hannibal's an enigma to all of us, Mason can be funny but probably makes children cry for fun, and I'm me, of course. Abigail's odd but harmless, though." 

"Margot isn't exactly scary either." 

Freddie raised an eyebrow and took another drag from her cigarette. "Maybe not to you. Margot is in a category all her own. Sometimes I can't decide whether I'd rather be her or fuck her." 

Will had no idea how he was supposed to respond to that, or to anything Freddie had said so far. He supposed Margot was beautiful, in the off-putting and untouchable way that all of them were beautiful. It was an abstract kind of beauty.

Freddie looked at him and rolled her eyes again. "I'm sorry, Will, did I scandalize you? It's never going to happen, of course. Mason knows about his sister's inclinations, but he'd throw a fit, and Margot knows better than to upset him." 

"That sounds unhealthy." 

"Believe me, you don't need to tell me that. But you know how it is, upper class New England sensibilities.” Freddie snorted and shook her head. “I’m new money, of course, so it doesn’t matter for me. But the Vergers…”

Will blinked at her. She laughed. “Oh, Graham. You really don’t know much about this place, do you.” She tapped her lip thoughtfully. “You really would make a good story. Bumbling transfer student here on a scholarship, but on the inside he’s really very sweet.”

“How do you know I’m here on scholarship?”

Freddie gave him a once-over, the same way Beverly had earlier this evening, though Beverly’s gaze hadn’t been this sharp. “Oh, honey, don’t worry. I know.”

“Really?” Will asked. He was getting too far into Freddie’s head. “Because I’m not sure your clothes didn’t come from the rejects pile at Salvation Army.” Freddie was wearing a bright red and green dress. Honestly, for all Will knew, it was the height of fashion.

If Beverly had heard him say that, she was going to kill him. His words hung in the air, until finally Freddie broke the silence by doubling over in laughter. “Oh, I like you, Graham,” she said, finally. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

-

Will wasn’t entirely sure that he liked Freddie Lounds, but he had to admit that gaining her friendship opened some doors for him. Though she spent the majority of her time with the other members of Dr. du Maurier’s class, she was also heavily involved with the campus’s newspaper, and as a consequence, seemed to know almost everybody. And once Will started spending time with her, everyone suddenly knew him, too, instead of ignoring him as part of the furniture.

Things also became easier with the other classics students, though there was still a stilted element to some of their interactions. But Mason began to clap Will on the back on occasion, which he gathered must be an expression of friendship, and he also began inviting Will out to lunch. Will was starting to have trouble coming up with excuses to decline. He had a brief but enjoyable conversation with Abigail about fishing, and afterwards she began to smile at him whenever they passed on campus. During a break while studying in the library, Margot braided her hair and told him stories about her horses. The affection Margot clearly had for the animals was endearing.

Hannibal seemed as unapproachable as ever, though he and Will began to spend a good deal of time together working in the library. They both had an affinity for late nights. Will simply tended not to sleep much—he never really had—and he supposed that Hannibal must not either. On one of these occasions, a quiet Wednesday night when they were both translating passages of the _Aeneid_ , Hannibal looked up and spoke, as if picking up the thread of a previous conversation. 

“I often wonder about Dido,” he said.

Startled, Will looked up from his work. “What about her?” The passage they both had due for class the next day was from book six. Dido, at this point, was ashes.

“Her dedication and constancy of mind. How does one achieve that, I wonder?”

“That’s an odd way to describe her.”

“It takes a great deal of strength, to do what she did. To set herself aflame, knowing it would bring herself and her city nothing but ruin—and knowing, anyway, that her love for Aeneas was strong enough that she must, if he would not return to her. She knew she could not live without him, and she knew too that he was determined to do as the gods bid him, to found his own city and his own people.”

“It wasn’t really her choice to love him, though. That was the gods meddling, too.”

Hannibal smiled. “You call it meddling? To me, it seems the hands of fate, tilting the world into its proper directions.”

“Which gods are putting the world on the right course, then? Juno wanted Aeneas to stay in Carthage, and Jupiter wanted him to leave. Which one of them was right?”

“Well, only one of them succeeded. So surely Jupiter must have been right.”

Will shook his head. Hannibal often said things like this, ideas that were shockingly antiquated and foreign to Will’s ears. 

“Besides,” Hannibal continued. “You say it was not Dido’s choice to love Aeneas—but she loved him all the same. Would you say that was not real?”

“I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that.”

“All love is involuntary,” Hannibal said. “It seizes us as surely and as implacably as Cupid seized Dido.”

“So are we all destined to burn ourselves out on a funeral pyre?”

“Perhaps,” said Hannibal, his eyes clear. 

Will looked back down at his book. _Ubi caelum condidit umbra Iuppiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem. _Hades, void of light and color. “Not much of a romantic, are you?”__

__Hannibal shrugged. “I consider myself a pragmatist in all matters. I do not see why love should be any different.”_ _

__“I think the lesson in Dido’s life is not to confuse love and madness.”_ _

__“Odd, that there should be a lesson at all.”_ _

__“What, you think Virgil spent his life writing the _Aeneid_ and didn’t want anybody to learn from it?”_ _

__“Tragedy needs no lesson to be beautiful.”_ _

__Will shook his head. He could see what Hannibal meant, though. There was something pure and decisive in Dido’s actions, a sense of calming finality. Acceptance of the shitty hand of cards that fate had dealt her._ _

__He wondered what it felt like, to lie on that pyre, flames licking at the sides. To look out at the sea and know her husband was not coming back._ _

__Hannibal closed his book. “Are you free this weekend?”_ _

__Conversations with Hannibal were going to give Will whiplash someday. “Yeah.”_ _

__“Come with me to the country. The others are coming as well. I have a house there.” Will had to stop himself from laughing or rolling his eyes—of course Hannibal Lecter had a house in the country._ _

__The invitation was barely phrased as a question, and anyway: what else was Will going to do with his time? Get dragged to another party with Beverly? He agreed, and bent to finish the last of his translation. Hannibal, though he was done with his work for the night, lingered._ _

__Talking with Hannibal always ended like this: with pensive but comfortable silences. Every time they spoke, Will told himself that he would keep things closer to his chest, stop saying the first thing that came into his head. He worried often that he was betraying too much of himself, that surely Hannibal was going to figure out that there was something wrong underneath Will’s skin._ _

__Hannibal never seemed to mind, to treat whatever Will said with anything but the utmost respect._ _

__And now, Will supposed, he was going to his country house this weekend._ _

__Will hadn’t known what to expect when he came to Hampden. It certainly wasn’t this._ _

__-_ _

__The car ride to the countryside felt like something out of another life, a life that Will had no place in. Hannibal had an old, sleek car with a bench seat in the front, so that it was large enough to hold all six of them. Forests and fields flew past the window. The leaves were just beginning to turn. They spoke of everything and nothing: conversations about the weather mingled with discussions of Virgil and Aristotle and infrequent asides from Hannibal in Latin, some of which Will could even keep up with. Mason occasionally cracked jokes that were either rude or bad or both, but even that didn’t break up the atmosphere. Freddie even laughed at some of them. Margot rolled her eyes, and though Will was not sure she and her brother tended to get along, at times she seemed almost affectionate. Perhaps just used to him._ _

__The country house, when they eventually arrived there, was so sprawling and beautiful that Will stopped like a deer in headlights as he left the car. Freddie, who had been sitting between Will and Margot, had to shove him in the back to get him moving again so that she could get out._ _

__The entire place was made of rough, wind-worn stone, and the house itself rose at least three stories high. Everything that Will could see was covered in vines and ivy, winding their way from the house and spilling out over the steps that went up to the front door. Behind the house, a lake was just barely visible._ _

__“Whose house did you say this was again?” Will asked as they ascended the front steps. He tried very hard to pretend that he wasn’t staring._ _

__“It belonged to my aunt,” said Hannibal, pulling out a heavy brass key from his pocket and unlocking the door. “As she is unfortunately no longer with us, it has now passed down to me.”_ _

__That raised more questions than it answered, but Will bit his tongue._ _

__Hannibal had called ahead to have the groundskeeper buy groceries, because apparently that was something you could do. He prepared dinner from a recipe printed on cardstock, though Will saw him glance at it only once before he began cooking. Apparently he knew the steps by heart. Will, who had never once cooked anything that he didn’t find the recipe for online, was duly impressed._ _

__Dinner was pot roast and a medley of vegetables with a French name that Will didn’t catch. Will had never tasted anything like it. He’d never spent time around people who could cook like this. The others seemed to see it as a typical meal. Mason complained that the meat was too rare and the vegetables too tough, until Freddie kicked him in the shin under the table._ _

__“Really, Lounds,” Mason said. “Uncalled for.”_ _

__“Don’t be tiresome,” Margot told him, not looking up from her plate. “Eat your food.”_ _

__Hannibal did not comment. Abigail, sweetly, complimented the food several times during the rest of the meal._ _

__Will helped do the dishes, though Abigail and Hannibal both attempted to dissuade him, saying that he should enjoy himself with the others. Abigail ended up sitting on the counter while Will washed and Hannibal dried, both of them in their shirtsleeves. Will had enlisted Beverly’s help finding appropriate clothes for this visit: he now owned three stiff-collared shirts with cuffs. Though the effort might have been wasted, as Mason had arrived to the car in a stained coat and with his tie askew, and no one had batted an eye._ _

__“Do you like it here?” Abigail asked him._ _

__“It’s beautiful,” Will said. “And very…isolated.”_ _

__“You don’t say that like it’s a bad thing,” Hannibal said from beside him._ _

__Will shook his head. “It’s wonderful,” he said, honestly. “I mean, Hampden’s in the middle of nowhere, but there are people everywhere. Here, it’s like—an island all on its own.”_ _

__Abigail grinned at him. “Exactly,” she said. “A place just for us.”_ _

__-_ _

__An odd thing happened that night. Perhaps it was because of the strangeness of the house or the people, or because of the fact that Will simply did not belong here. He woke with a start at what the old-fashioned clock on his bedside table told him was about three in the morning. Music played downstairs, a piano tune that he couldn’t place, something ethereal. He followed it downstairs and found a stag waiting for him, standing placidly in the middle of the living room. The piano stood at the wall. There was no one playing it. Will could still hear the music._ _

__It seemed the most natural thing in the world to walk towards the stag and put a hand on its flank, to feel its breath. To let it lead him outside and to the lake, under a pale half-moon. Will watched it drink, head bowed, and eventually he bent his head to drink to._ _

__All this he remembered clearly when he woke that morning, shivering in his bed with dirt creased between his toes._ _

__At breakfast, Hannibal asked how he had slept._ _

__“I fear I may have woken you playing the piano,” he said. “I thought that when you came down to listen, it was to reproach me.”_ _

__“No,” Will said. Had he spoken to Hannibal and not remembered it, or had he simply stood listening? “I enjoyed it.”_ _

__Will used to sleepwalk often as a child. It had driven his father crazy, him wandering off into the boatyard with no shoes in the middle of the night—he’d gotten several tetanus shots that way. Will thought that he’d trained himself out of the habit. Apparently he hadn’t. It had never been quite this unsettling. Will knew that sometimes if he wandered in the night he saw things that weren’t there, but he was not used to failing to see things or people that _were_ there. _ _

__That afternoon, Will and Hannibal sat on the steps of the house and watched as Mason, Margot, and Abigail swam laps across the lake, racing. Freddie, lazily refereeing and smoking a cigarette, got into three separate arguments with Mason over Margot winning. Even from ten yards away, Will could clearly see that Freddie was right: Margot was by far the better swimmer of the three._ _

__“Is he always like this?” Will asked Hannibal._ _

__Hannibal crossed one leg over the other and looked out at the water. “At times,” he said. “I will admit that it can get rather tiresome. But Mason is not without redeeming qualities.”_ _

__“Really?”_ _

__Hannibal, startlingly, laughed aloud at that. “His better qualities are not unlike yours.”_ _

__Will snorted. “Wow. Thanks.”_ _

__“Like you, he can be bracingly honest at times.”_ _

__“So you’re saying we’re both assholes.”_ _

__“I wouldn’t put it like that.”_ _

__Will took a drink from his glass. “No, you’re much more polite than I am.”_ _

__“Politeness, like honestly, has its place.”_ _

__Will thought for a moment about honesty, about the stag from his dream, about the thrift store coat he was wearing, about the curious calmness he felt often in Hannibal’s presence. Hannibal was perhaps the first person in his life that he felt he could be honest with._ _

__He opened his mouth to speak—to say what, he wasn’t sure—and was interrupted by Abigail’s cry._ _

__Looking up, Will saw Abigail standing in the shallow end of the lake, blood blooming in the water at her feet._ _

__“Oh, shit,” he said, and ran towards her. He could hear Hannibal, behind him, going into the house._ _

__Freddie had grabbed Abigail about the shoulders and was helping her towards the patio. Margot and Mason, still at the other end of the lake, seemed to have noticed something was wrong and were swimming back._ _

__“What happened?” Will asked, tucking his arm around Abigail’s waist._ _

__Abigail leaned her head against his shoulder, her hair slipping against Will’s neck. “There was a piece of metal,” she said, a little dreamily. “At the bottom of the lake. I knelt down and cut my leg. I wasn’t looking, I didn’t see it.” She was still bleeding as Freddie and Will hoisted her onto the patio and settled her down into one of the chairs. Blood was coming faster than Will thought it should, beginning to pool over the stones below._ _

__Margot and Mason had gotten out of the water and reached them by then. Mason hovered over Abigail, head tilted to the side. “Looks bad,” he observed. “Don’t you think someone should do something about that?”_ _

__“Are you volunteering?” Freddie asked through gritted teeth. She pulled off her scarf and tied it around Abigail’s leg, above the wound on her calf. Will found he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the cut. The edges were jagged and raw. The bleeding had slowed, at least._ _

__Margot had brought the piece of metal that Abigail had cut herself on. She handed it to Will, carefully, and he recognized it immediately. It was part of the propellor of a boat, bent and rusted with age. Someone must have used one in this lake a long time ago._ _

__Margot tucked her hand beneath Abigail’s head and turned it to face her. “Hey,” she said. “Look at me, okay? Focus on me. It’s going to be alright.” Will had never seen her this tender before. He supposed all of them had a soft spot for Abigail._ _

__Just then, Hannibal returned, holding a medical kit he must have unearthed from somewhere in the house. “Move away, please,” he said, voice calm and direct. Freddie and Will stepped back immediately. Mason didn’t move, still standing over Abigail and peering at her wound. He looked queasy, but fascinated too. Margot had to pull him back by his jacket._ _

__Hannibal knelt down beside Abigail, heedless of the blood that soaked into the leg of his pants. That, more than anything, startled Will. Hannibal was normally so precise with his appearance, so protective of his clothing. “Abigail. Can you look at me?”_ _

__She did, smiling hazily._ _

__“Good girl,” said Hannibal. “Deep breaths, now.” He adjusted Freddie’s makeshift tourniquet and began to disinfect the cut._ _

__Abigail tipped her head back to the sky. “Ow,” she said, a little more lucid._ _

__“Now,” said Hannibal. “I need you to make a choice, Abigail—would you rather us drive you to the emergency room, or do you want me to take care of this? It needs stitches.”_ _

__“What do you mean, take care of it,” said Will. “She needs to go to the hospital.”_ _

__“I have some medical training,” Hannibal said. “From my youth.” The strangest thing was that this did not seem at all implausible. It was just the kind of jagged puzzle piece that would fit into Hannibal’s past._ _

__“Jesus Christ, Hannibal. She might have hit an artery. We need to take her to the hospital.” That was Freddie. Her dress, a bright purple, was dotted with drops of blood along the front._ _

__“Oh, that sounds like a lot of bother,” said Mason. “Do you really want to go to an emergency room at this time of day, Lounds?”_ _

__Abigail shrugged. “You can do it,” she said to Hannibal. “I trust you.”_ _

__He smiled at her. He pulled out supplies from the medical kit methodically: antiseptic wipes, a shot of what Will realized was a local anesthetic, suture needles and thread. Surprisingly well stocked, but maybe that was part of Hannibal’s training too._ _

__Mason, at this point, wandered off to go make himself another drink. Freddie shook her head and followed him, shooting Hannibal a dirty look as she went. Margot settled down on the other chair to watch, and Will sat down beside her._ _

__“Have you seen him do this before?” he asked her._ _

__Margot shook her head, her wet hair swaying. “Nothing this serious,” she said. “Once, when he was staying at our estate, I fell off a horse and dislocated my shoulder. Hannibal set it for me.”_ _

__Will nodded. Abigail had closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her stomach, but she didn’t seem afraid or in pain. She almost looked as if she was dreaming._ _

__Hannibal’s face, when Will looked at him, was intent. His hands were careful and precise against the edges of the cut. He’d put on gloves, and the fingers of them were covered in blood. Shouldn’t there be less blood with the tourniquet still in place? But Will didn’t know much about biology, really. He had no idea how much blood a person had inside of them._ _

__Hannibal must know. Will didn’t know quite why he thought it, or why he couldn’t look away from Hannibal’s face as he stitched up Abigail’s leg, seven neat sutures. Hannibal’s expression remained clear and still until the very end, when he looked up and met Will eyes._ _

__“It’s alright,” Hannibal said. Will wasn’t sure if he was talking to him or to Abigail. Hannibal turned to look at her. “You’ll need pain medication, but we can procure some later.”_ _

__“Don’t worry about it,” said Margot. “Mason will have something.”_ _

__Abigail laughed. Hannibal patted her thigh and turned to Will. “I think there is a pair of crutches in the basement,” he said. “Would you care to help me find them?”_ _

__-_ _

__Will followed him into the house and down to what looked like cellar. One wall was stacked high with dusty wine bottles, which were collectively probably worth enough to pay off all of Will’s tuition. The other side looked more like the kind of basement Will was used to: unlabeled cardboard boxes filled with anything and everything in no particular order, more piles of junk tucked into nooks and crannies._ _

__“That was really impressive,” Will said to Hannibal’s back, as he bent to examine a pile of junk. It was disorienting, to stand here in this dimly lit, messy room and watch Hannibal rummage around. Blood had dried on his pants and his hair was askew from running to find the first aid kit. But his demeanor was as serious as ever._ _

__Will didn’t understand him at all. He wanted, suddenly and almost violently, to take him apart like a clock._ _

__The urge passed. Hannibal answered him. “Thank you. I am always glad when my knowledge can be of use.”_ _

__“Seriously, where did you learn all that?”_ _

__“My aunt and uncle were—somewhat eccentric, I suppose you could say. They had interesting ideas about what sort of things a young man should learn. I cannot say that they were necessarily wrong.”_ _

__“I guess so.” Will wanted to keep digging: why did Hannibal grow up with his aunt and uncle? Had he been raised in this very house? What had happened to his aunt, in the end? But even he knew it would be rude to ask. Hannibal’s parents, Will was fairly certain, were dead. He and Abigail both had an air about them that suggested they were orphans. A level of self-sufficiency and self-possession that the others lacked._ _

__“You said you were interested in criminal psychology,” Hannibal said. “I have wondered. Did you ever considered psychiatry as a possible path?”_ _

__“Me?” Will asked. He peered inside one of the cardboard boxes, finding only books written in what looked like Italian. “Never even crossed my mind. I can’t imagine anyone would let me.”_ _

__“And why not? You seem to have a knack for understanding.”_ _

__Will shrugged. “Understanding’s not all you need for psychiatry. You have to be reassuring. People have to like you. I’m not very good at being liked.” The next box held several records, though Will had not seen a gramophone in the house._ _

__“I beg to differ.” Hannibal straightened and walked towards Will, laying a hand on his shoulder. Will, to his own surprise, did not flinch. “I am finding that I like you very much.”_ _

__“Thanks,” said Will. “I think you might be in the minority.”_ _

__Hannibal shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said. “I considered psychiatry as a possible profession, once. I find people and their problems fascinating. But it did not seem like the correct path for me.”_ _

__Will moved aside another stack of books and found a pile of young girl’s clothing, and several pairs of shoes. Just behind them lay an old pair of crutches. He handed them to Hannibal. “Why not? You’d be good at it. You’re pretty good at putting people at ease.” Hannibal had a way of ingratiating himself with other students and with the faculty, though he often had nothing in common with them, and seemed afterward to be indifferent towards them. But he put on a good show._ _

__Hannibal took the crutches from him. “I appreciate the sentiment,” he said. “I once considered becoming a doctor, as well. In the end, I found that I had to follow my passions—that as interested as I am in the most visceral aspects of humanity, both mental and physical, I can best explore those through the work of the ancients.”_ _

__“That’s what you’re passionate about? The guts of humanity?”_ _

__“Of course,” said Hannibal. “Aren’t you?”_ _

__Will thought about Hannibal, kneeling in blood as he stitched up Abigail’s leg, of the light in Hannibal’s eyes when he discussed literature in class, of the careful, assessing way he looked at Will, as if he could see beneath his skin._ _

__“I’m not used to thinking of myself as a very passionate person.”_ _

__Hannibal began to make his way up the stairs. Over his shoulder, he said, “You will.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is at least the second time I’ve brought up Dido and Aeneas in fanfic. Look. It's fine.
> 
> Come and find me [on tumblr](http://luckydicekirby.tumblr.com/)! I’ve been reading the Oresteia for class, let’s chat about how cool the Eumenides is (or, you know, whatever else.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: brief discussion of abuse, and also just generally the kind of stuff that you would expect to come out of Mason Verger’s mouth.

The day after they returned from Hannibal’s country house, Will borrowed Beverly’s car and took Abigail to get a tetanus shot. 

She was fairly cheerful about it, insisting that the cut wasn’t that bad. All the same, Will felt oddly protective of her. He hadn’t known her for very long, but she was younger than the rest of them, and he felt almost parental towards her. Will had never seen himself as the type of man who would become a father. He could only hazily imagine finding himself in the type of extended relationship that would be required. He didn’t think he’d be very good at it—his own father certainly wasn’t. Will didn’t feel much rancor towards him, but there wasn’t much love lost on either side. 

But still, Will found that he had a peculiar sort of paternal affection towards Abigail. He knew he wasn’t the only one: Freddie had taken her under her wing at the beginning of the semester, to the point that though as a freshman she must only have joined Dr. du Maurier’s class a few weeks before Will did, it felt as though she had been part of it for years. Hannibal, too, seemed endlessly patient with Abigail in a way that he was not towards anyone else, spending hours helping her with Latin without any apparent annoyance.

“You know,” Abigail said, on the drive back to campus, “Freddie was so mad that I let Hannibal patch me up. She did that thing she does—pacing around in her heels while she yells at you, and the angrier she gets the louder the clicking does.”

“Does she do that a lot?”

“Not really. Usually she does it if she’s in a bad mood and Mason somehow _really_ pisses her off.”

“That seems like it could happen a lot.”

Abigail laughed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Sometimes I’m amazed they get along at all, what with—well, you know.”

“I can’t tell if you’re referring to Mason’s entire personality, or just the thing with Margot.”

Abigail sighed and looked down at her knees. “Both, I guess. It’s so sad, isn’t it? Freddie tries to pretend like it doesn’t bother her, but it really does. And Margot likes her a lot.”

Will shrugged. “Interpersonal relationships are not exactly my forte.”

“It seems like something that should be so easy,” Abigail said.

“In my experience, relationships are rarely easy.”

“Now you sound like Hannibal.” Abigail nudged Will in the side. “Can we stop and get Chinese? I’m starving.”

Will agreed, and switched lanes so that he could take the next turn and head toward the restaurant were he and Beverly usually went. Just as he turned off his turn signal, though, he caught sight of something dark and fast darting in front of the car. He slammed on the brakes, reaching out a hand to steady Abigail’s shoulder.

It was the same stag he’d seen at the country house, stark and out of place in the daylight. Will watched it raise its head to stare at him, and then bolt into the woods alongside the road. 

Someone behind him honked. Abigail was looking at him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sorry.” Will put his foot on the gas again. “I thought I saw a rabbit or something in the road.”

-

At dinner that week, Beverly pressed Will for information about his classmates.

“C’mon,” she said, when Will insisted that there was nothing to tell. “You spend like all your time with them. You’ve been spending _weekends at their country house_. Don’t even try to tell me there isn’t some kind of dirt on them.”

“I don’t know what you expect, Beverly. They’re bored rich kids. Mostly we just got drunk and did nothing. There’s a lake out there. Abigail and I fished a little.” He didn’t mention Abigail’s adventure with the boat propeller. If Beverly found out they’d let Hannibal take care of her wound without going to the hospital, she’d be livid. Will briefly imagined what her and Freddie teaming up on the warpath would be like, and regretted it.

Beverly stared at him. “You never drink when we go to parties.”

“I drink beer.”

“Yeah, one beer the whole night. You only really drink when it’s just us, which is weird. We’re in college, dude.”

Will shrugged. The truth was that the parties Beverly took him to were uncomfortable enough without him drinking. It was different hanging out just with Beverly, just like it was different at the country house: Hannibal had whiskey that felt like smoke on Will’s tongue, and the lazy atmosphere of the place was comforting. Will had managed to get the first hangover he’d had since coming to Hampden while he was there.

“So weird country weekends aside, what do they even do besides look cool and mysterious?” Beverly asked. She stole a fry from Will’s plate and chewed on it expectantly. 

“I don’t know. When you get down to it, they’re not really that weird. Or at least not weirder than anyone else. Just kind of standoffish and pretentious. They have their own quirks just like everyone else.”

Beverly sighed. “You’re really not very good at this whole dishing out dirt thing, are you, Will.”

“Gossip isn’t really my specialty, no.” 

“Ugh,” Beverly said, brandishing a fry at him. “Now you’re making me feel like an asshole for trying to get you to talk shit about your friends.”

Will had to stop himself from clarifying that they weren’t his friends. Startlingly, it seemed that they were. And wasn’t that something, to have more than one friend. Will wasn’t sure he’d ever done that before.

-

Classes with Dr. du Maurier remained much the same. Will worried sometimes that he would betray how out of depth he felt during their lessons, but soon enough it became clear that he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Mason complained nearly constantly about their assignments, as well as for the work in the one math class he was taking—“So that I can take over the family business someday, you understand,” he said. Freddie often paid more attention to her journalism class than to Dr. du Maurier’s lectures. Margot, Abigail and Hannibal were fairly studious, but Abigail occasionally approached Will after class to clarify points from the lecture, and Margot frequently roped Will into studying with her over coffee. Hannibal alone seemed to understand everything that Dr. du Maurier said implicitly. 

Their class today was one of the more frustrating ones, and also one of the more enlightening. On days like this, instead of going through conjugations or translating texts, they instead discussed anything that Dr. du Maurier felt that they should. They had once spent an extensive two hours talking about the significance of wolves in Roman mythology. Today, Dr. du Maurier opened class with, “Tell me about _Prometheus Bound_ ,” which they had read the week before. She declined to elaborate further.

“Boring,” Mason drawled. 

“I wanted to know more about Io,” Abigail ventured.

“Prometheus was an idiot.” That was Freddie.

“He only made a miscalculation,” said Margot. 

“It’s a warning,” Hannibal said. “The hubris of man will bring only suffering.” 

“Prometheus wasn’t human, though,” Will said. “He was a titan—he was just helping humanity.”

“Still,” said Hannibal. “His downfall was in his pride either way.”

“And what do you make of this warning, Mr. Lecter?” Dr. du Maurier asked. 

Hannibal shrugged. “It’s a similar conflict to many of the tragedies,” he said. “One cannot hope to defy the gods. We learn this over and over, from _Antigone_ to the _Oresteia_. The gods are the ultimate arbiters of fate.”

“But it’s the struggle that’s important, isn’t it?” Will said.

“What do you mean, Mr. Graham?”

Will shifted in his seat. “It doesn’t matter that the gods, that fate, get to decide everything. Or—it doesn’t matter to the people involved. Antigone knew she was going to die, but she still wanted to bury her brother. Tiresias, Jocaste, everyone, they all told Oedipus that trying to find the truth would only bring him pain. But he did it anyway.” Hannibal was watching him keenly. Will kept talking. “That’s the heart of all of the tragedies. The human struggle.”

“Ultimately a fruitless one, some might say,” said Hannibal.

“But it matters all the same,” said Dr. du Maurier. 

Hannibal inclined his head to her. 

“Weren’t we talking about _Prometheus Bound_?” Freddie asked. 

“We were,” Dr. du Maurier, face still as a lake. “Miss Lounds, would you care to extend Mr. Graham’s point about the similarities between Prometheus and Antigone?”

Mason snickered. Freddie ignored him, and answered Dr. du Maurier’s question. Will looked sidelong at Hannibal, but he remained silent for the rest of the class. His mind seemed almost to be somewhere else entirely. 

\- 

They went out to Hannibal’s country house a few more times that fall, for weekends that felt like bubbles insulated from the rest of the world. 

Sometimes Will would wake up in the night to find the house empty. Or at least, it seemed empty. It was hard to tell, especially in the liminal space that existed at about three in the morning, whether he was dreaming an empty house or not. He couldn’t imagine what the others would be doing at that hour, but on two separate weekends he went downstairs in the night, following a strain of music that no one was playing, and found no one there. The first time, he saw that the back door was ajar and went to close it. In the morning, he found mud caked around it that hadn’t been there the night before. He checked his own feet, but if it had been him wandering in the night again, he must have cleaned off the dirt.

He did his best to put that thought away as soon as he had it. 

The second time, when he found the back door open, he went upstairs to check the bedrooms. There was no one there. Will went back downstairs and sat in the living room, looking at his cell phone, wondering how crazy he would seem if he called and found that everyone was right where they were supposed to be, that he’d imagined everything. He fell asleep like that, and was woken up in the morning by Freddie banging around in the kitchen and Margot shaking his shoulder, asking him how he wanted his eggs.

After that, Will got into the habit of sitting in front of the fire in the den during those weekends, drinking late into the night. In part, it was because he didn’t relish the thought of sleepwalking again, and exhaustion had always been a good way to avoid it. It was also because Hannibal, still a poor sleeper even at the country house, tended to do the same. 

“Tell me something, Will,” Hannibal said, on one of those nights.

“Yeah?”

“Are you happy here?”

“Like, here specifically? Or generally?”

Hannibal hummed as he took another sip from his scotch. “Both, I suppose,” he said. “I can’t help but worry. I feel that since it is largely my fault you ended up in this particular course of study, your happiness is now my responsibility.” He paused. “Or perhaps I am thinking too much of myself. Freddie tells me that I am guilty of that at times.”

Will laughed. He wished he could’ve seen Hannibal’s face when Freddie said that to him. In truth, she wasn’t exactly wrong: Hannibal’s opinion of himself was clearly incredibly high. Normally that would piss Will off. It pissed him off with Mason. But it was different with Hannibal. Hannibal didn’t think he was better than everyone else, necessarily: he simply saw himself as in another category. For him to compare himself to other people would be like a wolf comparing itself to a rabbit. It was comforting, in a way. Will knew Hannibal would never look at him and find him wanting. Hannibal, as far as Will could tell, was a remarkably astute judge of character. 

Hannibal raised an eyebrow at him. “Shall I take your silence as a yes?”

Will, just then, couldn’t help but be honest. “I think I might be the happiest I’ve ever been in my life,” he said. “I didn’t really…do this before. Sit with people and talk.”

“Not even with your family?”

“There was only ever my dad. He’s not much for talking.”

“I see,” said Hannibal.

Will looked down at his glass. “I didn’t think I would like it,” he said. “Having people, doing stuff like this. But it’s nice. Really nice.”

“I’m glad,” Hannibal said. He looked at Will, and tossed back the rest of his drink, uncharacteristically fast. “Will. I have a question for you.”

A log shifted, and the fire crackled. Will could almost hear the phantom piano music again. Hannibal looked down at his glass, and remained silent until Will nudged him with his foot.

He gave Will the ghost of a smile. “I apologize,” he said.

“What were you going to ask me?”

Hannibal stood and walked to the sideboard to refill his glass. “I was going to pry more into the details of your life at Hampden,” he said, “but I think I have intruded enough for one night. Would you like another drink?”

Will handed Hannibal his wine glass and watched him refill it. His hands didn’t shake and his face remained impassive, but Will was still sure, somehow, that he was lying.

Of course, Will had almost crashed his car a few weeks ago because he was seeing things, which didn’t say much for his better judgement. He took the wine that Hannibal gave him, and they talked for hours more. If Hannibal still had a question for him, he never got around to asking it. 

-

For all that Will was a part of their circle now, there were still times when Dr. du Maurier’s students seemed distant or strange. Will himself didn’t feel that he could really blame them—after all, he was often distant and strange for no reason at all. Though they invited him to most of their dinners, he knew that he missed some of them. Sometimes he would walk into a room, and conversation would fall to a hush. But Will was used to that, and so he was able to mostly ignore it.

Freddie in particular grew tense during late October, snapping at everyone, but particularly Mason, much more often than she used to. Will wondered if there was a tactful way to ask her if something had happened with her and Margot. If there was, Will certainly didn’t know it. He could have asked Beverly, but Beverly, Will had learned, was sleeping with Freddie’s ex. Will decided to just give it up as a bad job.

Maybe Freddie was just sick of Mason’s bullshit, which Will certainly couldn’t blame her for. 

Mason himself was becoming more annoying, which Will would not have believed possible at the beginning of the year. His jokes grew worse, and though he had usually been able to pull a smile from Margot or even a laugh from Freddie at times, the others no longer seemed to find even his somewhat decent jokes funny.

Will finally asked Abigail if something was wrong. She seemed like the person most likely to actually give him a straight answer, but she only shrugged.

“Mason’s just being Mason,” she said.

“He wasn’t this much of an asshole last month,” Will said.

Abigail looked down at her books. They were in the library, though it was the middle of the day and Will wasn’t getting very much work done. Exams were looming ever closer, and the library was busy. “I know,” she said. “It’s probably just stress getting to him. I don’t think his classes are going so well.”

That was certainly true. Of the classics students, Mason was the only one to ever regularly miss class. Dr. du Maurier seemed to take it in stride, but Will couldn’t imagine it was doing good things for his grades. 

Mason did eventually corner Will into going out to lunch with him, after several weeks of Will coming up with increasingly thin excuses to avoid it. One on one interactions were really not Will’s thing, especially with people he wasn’t comfortable with. And while he knew Mason somewhat well at this point, he wouldn’t necessarily say he was comfortable around him.

“Now, don’t worry about it at all,” Mason said. “I know the perfect place.”

The perfect place turned out to be an annoyingly fancy French restaurant in Hampden town, which Will wasn’t even close to appropriately dressed for. In fact, Will didn’t even own anything that would have been considered appropriate dress. But Mason didn’t seem to notice or care about the looks Will was getting from the maitre de. It was one of the things that made spending time with Mason shockingly pleasant, at times: the man seemed absolutely immune to embarrassment. It was as if he didn’t know such an emotion existed. 

Still, the entire lunch was surreal. Mason didn’t let Will get a word in edgewise, which truthfully Will preferred. 

“Now Will,” Mason said, in the middle of picking apart and complaining about his salad, “I trust you won’t take too much offense to this, but you know how it is. Brotherly concern and all. I have to ask you what your intentions towards my sister are.”

Will barely managed to stop himself from choking on his drink. “Uh,” he said. This was one of those situations that required tact. Will hated tact. “I’m not—to be honest, Mason, I don’t know her very well.”

Mason sighed. “Yes, Margot is like that. I love her to death, of course, but that woman. Impossible to read sometimes.”

Will figured that it was probably safe for him to nod. Thankfully, Mason continued unprompted.

“Now, I do understand why you might be interested in her—small school, not too many eligible women around, don’t think I don’t see the problem here. But I’d stay away from Margot if I were you. Not exactly emotionally available. Or available in other ways, if you know what I mean.”

Jesus Christ. “Of course,” Will said, a little more icily than he intended. 

Mason didn’t seem to notice. He smiled brightly at Will. “Shall I order us another round of drinks?”

Suppressing a sigh, Will said, “Sure. Why not.”

-

Things came to a head on a Sunday night dinner at Hannibal’s apartment. Hannibal hosted dinner at least one evening a week, though more often twice or three times, depending on everyone’s schedule. Will had never eaten better in his life. The first time he’d attended, he would have assumed that Hannibal had hired a private chef, if he hadn’t seen him cook for himself at the country house. As it was, Beverly was starting to bribe him to bring her back leftovers.

The dinners weren’t always full—Freddie in particular was often busy on other business—but on that Sunday everyone was there. Will got the sense that Hannibal had gone to some extra trouble, though with the usual amount of trouble he went to when it came to cooking, it was somewhat hard to tell. But in particular, Will noticed that several of the dishes that Mason seemed to favor—pork loin, bean casserole, even a vodka martini prepared to specifications that Will didn’t quite catch—were on the menu. 

Mason had, inexplicably, brought a newspaper with him. Will had never seen him reading the paper before.

“Freddie,” he said, waving it under her face as they waited for Hannibal to finish cooking, “have you seen this new article in the Hampden paper? It’s one of the trashier ones, of course, but still very interesting.”

“I’m sure it is, Mason,” Freddie said, deadpan. 

“No, I really think you ought to have a look. It’s very enlightening!” 

Hannibal was in the kitchen, and Abigail was setting the table. Margot caught Will’s eye over Mason’s head and rolled her eyes. Will, suppressing a smile, came to look over Mason’s shoulder, but Margot grabbed the paper from him before Will could get a good look. 

“Mason’s been fascinated with local Hampden politics,” she said, rolling the paper up and tucking it into her purse.

“Politics. As if I would care about _politics_ , Margot.” He turned to Will. “It’s unbelievable, really. A murder, right in our own town! Your area of expertise is criminal psychology, now isn’t it?”

Will shrugged. “Not anymore.”

“But surely you can provide us some insight—” Mason was interrupted by Hannibal, rapping his knuckles on the doorframe of the kitchen. 

“Dinner is ready,” he said.

The food was amazing, as always. Will said so, and Hannibal favored him with a slice of a smile. 

“A bit undercooked, don’t you think?” Mason said, chewing his way through a piece of pork with his mouth full.

“I prefer my meat on the rare side,” Hannibal said, his tone even.

Mason put his cutlery aside and leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “Of course you do,” he said. “Now, that reminds me of what I was talking about before. You guys must have heard about it, right? This poor, poor man in Hampden. Killed in our very own town! They say it could have been an animal attack, but they were sure some of the clawmarks came from human fingernails. And his heart was missing. His _heart_ , nothing else.” Mason tutted. “Truly obscene, if you ask me.”

“Sounds like a ghost story,” said Abigail neutrally.

“Mason.” Freddie set her glass down noisily. “Is this really appropriate dinner table conversation?”

“Oh, maybe not,” Mason said airily. “Actually, Freddie, I’ve been meaning to ask you. I’ve heard some rumors around school. I was wondering if you could weigh in on them, you seem like you’d know about that sort of thing.”

Mason was not entirely wrong. Freddie was well known for her nose for gossip.

“Sure,” Freddie said. “You know you can always count on me, Mason.” Will was glad Freddie had never glared that way at him.

“What’s this I’ve been hearing about you and Wendy Corvin? Or was that Wendy Corvin and Beverly Katz? I couldn’t quite get it straight. You really shouldn’t let people spread lies like that, Freddie, it’ll ruin your reputation.”

“I like knowing things, Mason,” Freddie said. “That doesn’t mean I listen to every piece of trash that comes out of anyone’s mouth.”

Will hoped that Mason might drop it. Instead, he laughed and leaned forward across the table. “Sure, sure,” he said. “But I don’t know, Freddie. I heard your family isn’t really _high class_ , so trailer trash is probably more your style.”

Freddie put her fork down with a clatter. 

Mason was still talking. “I guess I can’t _really_ blame you—we all know how important a good upbringing is to developing moral values, so it’s no wonder—”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Margot said. She rose from the table, walked to Mason in measured steps, and, to Will’s surprise, slapped him across the face. The room got very quiet after that. “Sometimes I don’t know why I put up with you.” She turned on her heel and stormed out of the apartment.

Silence stretched out between the rest of them, fragile and dangerous. 

Freddie stood, picked up Margot’s purse and an unopened bottle of red wine, and used it to give a sloppy salute before following Margot out. Will dearly wanted to follow her, but that would leave Abigail stuck here alone.

It was Abigail who broke the silence, in the end. Hannibal was drinking from his glass of wine, seemingly unperturbed, while Mason dabbed delicately at his face with a napkin. She said, quietly, “That’s more dessert for us then, I guess?”

Mason barked out a laugh. “You’re quite right. And a little less _drama_ to accompany it certainly won’t hurt,” he said, and he then proceeded to act as if nothing at all had happened. Will tried his best to do the same, although he wasn’t as good at it as Hannibal and Abigail were. 

Mason did leave in fairly high spirits, eventually, after Hannibal had managed to get about five more drinks into him. Abigail and Will stayed to help with the washing up, and also for a debriefing.

“Any idea what that was about?” Will asked both of them. 

Abigail shrugged, and wouldn’t look up from the plate she was drying. “No clue,” she said. If she’d been able to meet his eyes, Will would have believed her. He turned to Hannibal, who had uncharacteristically allowed Will and Abigail to completely take over the dishes without complaint. He paced back and forth across the kitchen. He was, Will realized, incredibly pissed off. 

“Mason,” he said, in a clipped and cool voice, “is simply incapable of letting a single evening pass in anything close to pleasantness. We cannot fault him for this, of course: it is merely in his nature.”

“He was probably just drunk,” Abigail said in a conciliatory tone.

“No,” Hannibal said, “I find that the Vergers both tend to be much more pleasant when inebriated. Mason less obnoxious, and Margot more honest. No, I think that our dear friend Mason was simply being himself, no more and no less.”

Abigail looked anxious. Will didn’t exactly enjoy the fighting either, but it was interesting to see Hannibal speak so candidly about his feelings. It wasn’t something he did often.

-

Will and Abigail left a short time later. Freddie had given them a ride to Hannibal’s, and so they started to walk back to Hampden, Abigail silent and still as a statue beside him. It was some three miles, but Will didn’t mind. The air was cool and crisp, and rather clarifying after the rest of the night.

“So I assume you’re not going to tell me what’s going on with Mason,” he said, about a mile away from Hannibal’s house, on the edges of Hampden town.

Abigail smiled, and tucked her face into her scarf. “It’s complicated,” she said. “And not really any of my business.”

“Or mine.”

“Well,” Abigail said. She smiled at him, teasing. “I mean, not really.”

“Alright, alright,” Will said. “Even I can take a hint.” He’d figure it out anyway, he knew. No one was as good at keeping secrets as they thought they were.

About five minutes later, Freddie’s car pulled up alongside them on the road. Margot leaned out of the passenger’s side window. “Get in,” she said. “We’ll give you a ride back the rest of the way.”

The mood in the car was somewhat festive. Margot was exquisitely drunk. Will could tell from her posture: Margot was still inscrutable when she was drinking, but she grew more relaxed and languid than she ever was otherwise. 

Freddie joked with Abigail while she drove them back, but her knuckles were white around the wheel.

Once Freddie had parked the car back at Hampden, Abigail waved at them and walked back to her dorm. Will stayed by the car, hands in his pockets and breath steaming in the air, and waited for Freddie and Margot to get out of the car.

When she saw him waiting, Freddie sighed. “Can this wait?” she asked. 

“I’ve got whiskey back in my room,” Will offered. 

“What a gentleman,” Margot said. “Not something you see much of around here.” She inclined her head. “Lead the way.”

They settled into Will’s room with mugs of whiskey in their hands, Will sitting on the bed, Freddie perched on his desk chair, and Margot lying on the floor, whiskey balanced on her stomach. 

“Let me guess,” Margot said, before Will could decide what he wanted to ask. “You want to know what’s wrong with Mason.”

“It would be a start, yeah.”

Freddie shook her head and took a deep drink from her mug. “Nothing’s wrong with him,” she said.

“Everything’s wrong with him.” Margot set her whiskey beside her on the floor and sat up in a fluid motion. “This is actually pretty normal, for him.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Freddie. She nodded to Will. “Nothing to worry about—what are you doing?” 

Will looked up to find that Margot was unbuttoning her blouse. “Um,” he said, feeling suddenly out of his depth. Freddie looked just as uncomfortable as he felt. 

Margot ignored them both, and shrugged out of the left arm of her shirt. She pulled her hair aside to bare her shoulder. A deep scar ran across Margot’s shoulder blade, rough and jagged at the edges.

“Once, when we were younger, Mason tried to kill me,” she said, voice dispassionate. Freddie set her mug down loudly on the desk. “We were out on a hiking trail together. I made fun of him for lagging behind. He attacked me with a rock from the river we were walking by, and then he tried to drown me.” Her tone didn’t once change.

Feeling sick, Will thought of Margot and Mason’s swimming competition a few weeks ago.

Freddie stood up unsteadily, her hands balled into fists. “That was him?”

Margot nodded. She pulled her arm back into her sleeve, and started to button her shirt.

“Where the fuck is he?”

“Don’t bother,” said Margot. She turned to Freddie and smiled. “It was a long time ago. And he holds the keys to the kingdom, as far as my family goes. No point in getting into a drunken fight with him.” 

Freddie started to pace. Margot took a drink from her mug, and lay back down, hair fanned out around her head. “I’m just saying, this month isn’t an aberration. Only a fluctuation in behavior.” She closed her eyes. “He’ll calm down eventually. He always does.”

Will leaned down to pour her another measure of whiskey.

Margot and Freddie left together at about three in the morning. Will set their mugs on the desk and sat down heavily in the chair. He wondered if he’d been lying to Beverly, when he said there wasn’t anything to tell about the other classics students. 

In the end, it didn’t really matter. Will found that he didn’t care if they were lying to him, that they tolerated Mason for reasons he didn’t understand. It was probably some fucked up class thing. And of course in Margot’s case, she didn’t really have a choice. 

He found, actually, that the only thing that bothered him was the question that Hannibal hadn’t asked, all those nights ago. Will desperately wanted to know what it was, like an itch under his skin. 

A whole collective secret right under his nose, and what he really wanted to know was what Hannibal wanted to say to him. Christ. 

-

The snow came upon them unexpectedly in the middle of November. The past few weeks had been fairly balmy for this late in the year. Will thought that maybe all the things he’d heard about Vermont winters were exaggerations, and Beverly grumbled about the lost opportunities to wear flannels and drink tea.

“Do you even like tea?” Will asked her.

“No,” she said. “But it’s the principle of the thing!”

She was the one to wake him up, banging on his door at nine in the morning and demanding that he get his ass out of bed. It was a Saturday, and Will had gone to sleep around five. He opened the door groggily. Beverly, grinning, threw a pair of gloves at his face.

“It’s snowing! Get dressed! We’re supposed to have a snowball fight with Rockefeller,” she said, naming a nearby dorm. 

Will thought, very seriously, about closing the door in her face. He sighed and handed her back the gloves instead. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be out in a bit, okay?”

“Fine, fine,” she said. “But I’m not letting you get out of this one, Will!”

Laughing, Will closed the door. He opened the crooked shutters on his window and peered outside.

The snow was falling steadily, the quad still an unbroken field of white. Just looking at it was calming. Will leaned his arms on the windowsill and stuck his head out. Without thinking about it too much, he took out his phone and texted Hannibal. 

Hannibal must have been on campus, because he arrived at Will’s room about five minutes later. Despite the weather, he looked impeccable, wearing a sleek dark coat and a red scarf wrapped elegantly around his neck. Will was still wearing the clothes he had slept in, and snow had gotten in his hair.

The peaceful feeling the snow had given him started to evaporate. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m not really fit for human company yet—I don’t know why I texted you, I just—”

“You remembered our first conversation,” Hannibal said. “Don’t apologize. I find it quite flattering.”

Hannibal came towards him and gently nudged him aside, so that he could look out the window as well. 

“It’s really beautiful,” Will said uselessly. He could feel his face heating up.

“Yes,” Hannibal said, turning to face Will. He brought his hand up to Will’s chin. Will hadn’t even realized he’d been avoiding Hannibal’s eyes until he was forced to look at him.

Will’s mind was blank, just as it had been when he’d been looking at the snow. He never felt like this. He never felt this comfortable in his own skin.

Hannibal took his hand away, and the spell broke. But everything was still muffled just slightly, the kind of reflective quiet that came with snowfall. “Shall we go out?” Hannibal asked, as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened.

Will blinked. “Sure,” he said. “I have to get dressed first.” 

“I’ll go see if Miss Katz wants to join us,” Hannibal said. “I passed her when I came in.”

Will, thinking about Beverly trying to convince Hannibal to join a snowball fight, got dressed as fast as he could. When he stumbled out of his room, still pulling on one of his boots, he found Hannibal and Beverly having a perfectly civil conversation about Freddie’s latest article in the _Hampden Inquirer_ , the somewhat dubiously named school newspaper. 

“I can’t believe she actually got those people to talk to her about their drug deals,” Beverly was saying. “Everyone knows she writes down literally everything anyone tells her.” There was a hint of bitterness in Beverly’s voice. Will, who desperately did not want to get involved in whatever the situation was with Beverly and Wendy and Freddie, didn’t bring it up.

“Our Miss Lounds can be quite convincing, in her own way,” Hannibal said. 

Beverly sighed. “Definitely true.”

“Are you still going to that snowball fight?” Will asked.

“Not sure,” said Beverly. “Jimmy and Brian just texted me, and they’re trying to recruit me to help them with this fort they’re making in front of the science building. Wanna join up?”

Will didn’t trust himself to look at Hannibal without laughing. “No thanks,” he said. “I think I’m just gonna walk around campus, get a feel for the place before it gets all gross and muddy.”

“Smart!” Beverly agreed. “Enjoy that first snow wonder while you can. Pretty soon it’s just going to be annoying.” She gave him a salute.

Hannibal looked him over. “You’re sure you’ll be warm enough?” 

Will rolled his eyes. “I think I’ll be fine. I’m not a completely useless southerner.” 

Hannibal made a noncommittal noise, and tugged his red scarf off. Before Will realized what he was doing, he had wrapped it around Will’s neck. Will just stood there and blinked at him as he tied it into a careful knot at his throat. “There,” Hannibal said, sounding satisfied. “That will do nicely.” He turned to go.

Beverly, at Will’s side, stared at him. 

Will shrugged at her. She threw up her hands and mouthed _we’re talking about this later!_ , before she shook her head and went back to her room. Then she poked her head back out to give him a grin and a thumbs up.

Will, smiling, followed Hannibal out of the dorm, his nose tucked into Hannibal’s scarf. He breathed in the fresh cool air, put his hands in his pockets, and, despite everything, felt very much like a fresh bank of snow: bright and unbroken and calm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to ceruleanvulpine for helping me make Mason more slappable.
> 
> Sorry this took forever! My excuses are twofold: I had midterms, and also I live in America, which as one might expect, is currently exceedingly stressful.
> 
> EDIT 2/26/17: Hey, just dropping by here to say that while it has been a little too long, I am definitely still working on this fic! I'm graduating from college soon, which combined with the general messiness of the world has made me pretty busy. As much as I'd love to, I haven't been able to prioritize fic writing. I'm very determined to finish this story, though, because it's a lot of fun to write! I'm hoping to get the next chapter up sometime next month, though unfortunately I can't guarantee it. Thank you so much for reading and for your patience!


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